Advantages [Page 3 of 6]
Security
[Please note that the funding presentation is currently considered historical and is not updated —corvid]

As it was stated in the introductory item, “Personal security and privacy”more...(objectives section), security has several defense lines. Besidesthose stated there, another interesting weakness worth examining islocal inspection of cache and history files.

In fact, one of the common browser “subproducts” is an extensivecache record, that takes the form of a directory structure with local files,and another that keeps track of the visited URLs(or at least the most recent ones).

As personal computers are seldom used by a single person, peerinspection of those files can tap a huge load of information aboutbrowsing habits, visited places, images viewed etc.

Worse yet, if those files are inspected by a “trojan program”, thewhole contents can be sent outside and recorded in an external server thataccurately profiles personal interests.

Dillo avoids these problems by keeping the whole cache in memory,so that after finishing a session, there’re no saved files, nor avisited URLs history.

High SW efficiency
Dillo already has:

  • Extraordinary speed, both on rendering and networking.
  • Innovative concurrency handling that allows for a user interface that’s always responsive and that lacks busy-clock locks!
  • Minimal HW requirements (both on CPU and memory), that let it run on several platforms including some handhelds!
  • Graphical user interface.
  • Support for HTML, XHTML, plain text, and image formats (GIF, JPEG and PNG).
  • Tiny startup time (around 2 seconds!)
  • Minimal size:
    • Source is around 300 Kilobytes
    • Binary is less than 250 Kilobytes

    That is around 40 times less than a big browser.

Note that efficiency not only means gains for minimalistic HW, it alsoallows better exploitation of desktops and servers. For instance:

  • An administrator can gather web information from the same server he’s working on without affecting its performance.
  • There’s no problem with running dillo on a working database server (browsing its manual for tunning information for instance).
  • Playing mp3 music while surfing the net.
  • Working with the GIMP, but also having an open dillo with the manual.
  • etc.
Compatibility

Dillo has been reported to run on the following operating systems / architectures:

Linux:

  • Intel x86 CPU-family with any GNU/Linux (libc5 and glibc2)
  • GNU/Linux on a DEC Alpha (glibc 2.0)
  • GNU/Linux for PPC (YellowDogLinux 2.1)
  • Sparc 5 (32 bits) GNU/Linux, glibc 2.1.3, gcc 2.95.3
  • Sparc ultra 1 (64 bits kernel, 32 bits userspace) GNU/Linux, glibc 2.1.3, gcc 2.95.3

*BSD

  • NetBSD (in pkgsrc)
  • FreeBSD (in the ports)
  • OpenBSD (in the ports)

OS X:

  • MAC OS X
  • GNU Darwin! (Power PC and x86) Look here

Solaris:

  • Sun Blade 100 (Ultra SPARC III), Solaris 8, gcc 3.0
  • SunOS jaca 5.7 Generic_106541-04 sun4u sparc
  • Sparc ultra 10 (64 bits) solaris 8, gcc 2.95.2

Handhelds:

  • iPAQ handheld! (familiar distribution) —screenshots
  • Psion handheld 5MX/5MXPro (CPU: 32bit ARM 710T, 37MHz) –Debian ARM linux
  • Intel’s StrongArm CPUs!
  • GMATE’s Yopy
  • NetBSD, which includes dillo, has been ported to several StrongARM and MIPS based handhelds.

Miscellaneous:

  • SGI O2 running IRIX
  • Tru64 (OSF1) 4.0 on Alpha
  • HP 9000 715/80 with Debian hppa
  • 68k Linux on Q40 and Q60 (sinclair QL compatible machines)
  • QNX RTP 6.1/x86 (with occasional memory faults out of GTK+)
  • AIX 4.3 (with some tweaks)
  • SONY PlayStation2 (Linux)
  • Atari-based 68k-systems running MiNT as OS! (see)